BACK in 2005, students from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School gave the first performance of Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation of CS Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe outside Stratford-upon-Avon, and this Christmas a new bunch of training actors has returned to the children’s story, directed by Jenny Stephens. This sell-out show, at the Redgrave…
IF you are wondering how to occupy small children in the run-up to Christmas, or in the days following the holidays, there probably won’t be a more wondrous experience than Little Bulb Theatre’s Antarctica, on at Bristol Old Vic Studio until 4th January. Specially created for very young audiences and their families, but equally enchanting for…
THE audience at the Spiegeltent, in Bristol for the month up to Christmas, may have been the first to hear the Tiger Lillies’ new commission from Opera North, Lulu – a Murder Ballad, on 1st December. Loosely based on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, it is 20 songs and interludes charting the life and…
FROME-based actor, playwright (and now film director) Pip Utton has an extraordinary knack of inhabiting his characters, so that their familiar tics and expressions become part of his face and body. His solo shows are now the stuff of theatrical legend, after many years packing houses on the Edinburgh Fringe, and touring to venues large…
PETER Wintle first saw Peter Shaffer’s play Equus in 1976, three years after I saw the first production at the National Theatre. It has always been one of the most controversial plays among Shaffer’s extraordinarily varied body of work, recently in the public eye again with Daniel (Harry Potter) Radcliffe in the leading role of…
ANYONE who has ever had dealings with amateur musical or dramatic societies will recognise the set-up in Alan Ayckbourn’s brilliant comedy, A Chorus of Disapproval, Frome Drama Club’s autumn production at the Merlin in November 2014. There is the endearing old couple, company stalwarts who are slightly despised by the younger (but not necessarily more…
YEOVIL Youth Theatre’s “Grease” was chock-a-block with energy from the word go. As the fact packed programme informed us: “The watchword with a production like “Grease” is FUN” – and fun it certainly was. As one of the few people there with a bus pass, it was a treat to witness the eager anticipation and…
VERDI’s great opera was brought to the Pavilion for one night only by the Chisinau National Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra in a new production directed by Ellen Kent. Perhaps the most popular of all Verdi’s operas, Aida is the tragic story of a beautiful Ethiopian slave girl and her love for the Egyptian battle hero…
THE Freight and Salvage in the centre of the university town of Berkeley in California is described as a coffee house, but its fame is for much more than serving a latte or a frapaccino. This community run venue not only offers weekly classes in banjo, fiddle and guitar but attracts some of the world’s…
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, leader Amyn Merchant Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Chorus Master Gavin Carr Conductor: Kees Bakels Elizabeth Watts, Soprano, Jennifer Johnston, Contralto Joshua Ellicott, Tenor David Stout, Bass Mozart Don Giovanni Overture Mozart Symphony No.38 “Prague” Mozart Requiem Amsterdam-born Kees Bakels, the BSO’s former Chief Guest Conductor, has remained a regular visitor to Poole since…